Tamil refugees fled Sri Lanka years ago, but ill-fated voyage to Canada has brought them no closer to peace

Asylum seekers were rescued by British navy during failed 22,500km journey - leading to allegations of abuse and a years-long legal battle with the UK

Tamil asylum seekers on a boat travelling across the Indian Ocean

It was on the 11th night at sea, on a radarless, rickety fishing boat filled with desperate asylum-seeking families implausibly heading from India to Canada, that Priya saw the lights of what she thought was a rescue ship.

Drinking water had run out, the boat was damaged and the passengers had come to realise the crew were not trained sailors, but clueless amateurs. Their plan to make the 22,500km journey across two oceans, facing the steep waves of the world's most perilous waters in a tiny vessel, was coming to an end weeks earlier than intended.

The lights turned out to be a military base on the remote island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

Priya and her 88 fellow Tamils, including her father, were saved by a British naval ship, bringing an end to their journey. But it did not end their quest for asylum, which has now extended more than three years, involving a complicated legal battle, suicide attempts, sexual violence, squalid living conditions and, for Priya, being taken to Rwanda.

The 24-year-old, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, could never have imagined living in the central African nation, but for the past 18 months it has been her home.

Priya was transferred there for medical treatment, making her one of a handful of asylum seekers to be transferred to the country. It is an ironic twist after the plans of the previous UK government to use Rwanda to process the asylum claims of those arriving in small boats ran into opposition in the courts, before being shelved.

Voyage around the globe

Priya’s extraordinary journey began in 2021, but it is tied to the political situation facing Tamils in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war in 2009.

She said her work as a photographer attracted the attention of the Sri Lankan military, which led to her arrest and detention. She alleges she was raped by soldiers at a Sri Lankan army base, after which she left for India in 2021. Her family continued to face harassment and violence, she says.

“Around that time, someone told my father about a boat leaving for Canada,” she said. “I feared the boat journey, but I had to escape from India. I had no other options, so I chose this journey.”

While at first glance the idea seems outlandish, similar voyages have been accomplished in the past. In 2010, 492 Tamils travelled from Thailand to western Canada on a ship that had been bound for the scrapyard. The group was picked up by the coastguard.

“They were genuinely travelling to Canada. It sounds fantastical, but it's true, and the ship's logs record that’s what they were doing,” lawyer Tom Short, from Leigh Day Solicitors, which represents many of the asylum seekers, told The National.

Many of those who set out from India's southern Tamil Nadu state in September 2021 sold their valuables, including wedding rings, to pay for the journey. It was organised by fellow Tamils, and not people smugglers.

The boat was bought by four members of the community and they sourced water and diesel for the journey. They found a crew for the ship, but they were not professional sailors or had little experience of navigating the high seas.

The aim was to make the voyage in the small boat in as little as 45 days, which is ambitious to say the least. It takes 33 days for cargo vessels to do the trip.

One woman, who says she paid 150,000 Indian rupees ($1,700) for the journey, soon began to realise those on board had been sold a lie.

“They said they would land us in Canada in 45 or 60 days,” said the woman, 40, according to a written statement given to The National. “They said they were taking us on like a ship, not a boat, that there will be everything like toilet facilities and bedroom facilities, even a facility to convert seawater into drinking water, and satellite phone call facilities. It was only later that we came to know that everything they said was a lie and they had cheated us.”

The drinking water tank broke after less than a week at seam because of rough condition that also damaged the boat’s hull. The passengers were forced to drink unclean water for days, before even that ran out. “I thought I was going to die,” the woman said.

Priya explains that, when they saw lights in the distance, they steered the boat towards them before “slowly realising it was not a ship but an island”.

The boat's engine broke down as they neared the island on the morning of October 3. But soon “a British navy boat came towards us at full speed and we asked them for drinking water", Priya said.

They still wanted to press ahead on their voyage to Canada and asked for help from the Royal Navy to repair the boat. A couple of days later, they were told it was not possible to get the vessel into a sufficiently seaworthy shape to continue. They were stuck on Diego Garcia.

Hell in paradise

People on the voyage told The National that they thought they were going to die at sea, only to be faced with a different kind of despair once it became clear they could not leave easily.

With pristine, palm tree-lined beaches and wild donkeys friendly enough to be patted, on the surface Diego Garcia resembles an island paradise. The territory is one of the Chagos Islands, which sit in the Indian Ocean and became British territory after the Napoleonic Wars.

It is constitutionally separate from the UK, but is run by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. An airstrip was built on the island during the Second World War and the UK purchased the Chagos Islands from what at the time was the self-governing colony of Mauritius, creating a British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in the process.

The government of Mauritius has long argued it was illegally forced to give the islands away in return for independence from the UK in 1968. British authorities last month agreed to give sovereignty of the island to Mauritius, in return for retaining control for the next 99 years of the military base it leases to the US.

That means the military personnel on the island, who number between 3,000 and 5,000, will remain there for the time being.

The base is of strategic importance to the US Air Force, whose bombers used the island to launch attacks on Afghanistan after 9/11, as well as carrying operations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It remains crucial for US power projection in the region. To cater for the needs of military personnel and their families, there are shops, bowling alleys, softball pitches, tennis courts and parks, as well as clubs where military personnel dance at foam parties or play pool and darts.

The Tamils' claim for asylum is the first to be launched on a BIOT. It has resulted in a prolonged and complex legal battle as they push to be relocated and for the harsh conditions in which they have been held to be improved, all set against the backdrop of political wrangling about the UK’s immigration policy and its colonial legacy.

The Commissioner for Diego Garcia, the UK civil servant who governs the territory, accepts he cannot return them to Sri Lanka, as that would breach international law. At a court hearing on Diego Garcia last month, the first to be held there for 40 years, lawyers representing the Tamils argued they were being detained unlawfully. A decision in the case is due later this year.

Squalid conditions

Conditions in the 100-metre by 140-metre area near the military base, where the Tamils have been confined, is anything but idyllic. Priya said they were put into nine tents at first, with about 15 people living in each one.

Men and women shared one toilet, there were no medical facilities and not enough food or drinking water. “We were told that if we try to leave the camp where we were held, the US military would shoot us,” she added.

UN representatives who visited the camp in 2023 heard allegations of sexual assault and harassment carried out by other asylum seekers.

The sense of hopelessness felt by the Tamils, a group that 16 children, has resulted in recurrent attempts and suicide and cases of self-harm by more than 20 people, including Priya. The UN refugee agency agreed with previous assessments that the conditions "fail to provide the necessary standards of privacy, safety and dignity".

“Diego Garcia is a hell island. We think that death is better than living like this situation on Diego Garcia,” one asylum seeker said. “We can't go back to Sri Lanka or India …. that's why we are stay here like this.”

Mr Short says delays in dealing with the Tamils have been dragging on so long that many of the younger members of the group know no other way of life.

“To put it out in some context, our youngest client is about to turn five next month, and he has been there since he was one,” he says. “It’s absolutely insane that the vast majority of his life has been lived in a tent infected by rats.”

Some of the asylum seekers secured the right for to move around more freely on the island, after going to court this year.

A handful were sent to Rwanda to receive medical treatment after falling ill, or after surviving attempts at suicide. They have remained in the capital, Kigali, but their future still rests on the outcome of the Diego Garcia legal case.

Life in Rwanda

The UK government proposed sending migrants who arrived in small boats to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, in a bid to deter them from making crossing the Channel from France. The scheme foundered after refugee groups launched legal action on the basis that the central African country was unsafe, although one asylum seeker went voluntarily.

There are currently eight Tamil asylum seekers living in Rwanda.

Priya says she was driven to despair after being told she would be sent back to Sri Lanka at the beginning of last year. She also says she was raped in Diego Garcia by a man living in the same tent as her.

“I was thinking of suicide because I had no protection," she says. "There was no point to my life after losing my dignity. I was so afraid that if I fall into the hands of the Sri Lankan army again, they will torture and kill me.”

Priya and her father, who is unwell, are living in an apartment in Kigali, rather than the hotel the Rwandan authorities prepared to receive asylum seekers. But she says she does not feel safe there.

“Many times, burglars came to my apartment," she explains. "I could not sleep at night because we were so afraid of burglars. I went to the police station several times, but the police have not taken any action.”

Soon after arriving in Rwanda, Priya was told she would not be sent back to Sri Lanka and that UK authorities were working to find a safe third country for her.

Rwandan official Doris Uwicyeza Picard has told the BBC that all the migrants transferred from Diego Garcia were being treated “to the best of our ability”. She said the migrants’ concerns about the safety of the country are not shared by local people.

“It breaks my heart to hear that somebody may not feel safe in this country, especially when we've worked very hard to make this country safe for everyone," she added.

The National has sought a response from Ms Uwicyeza Picard.

End in sight?

The British government’s reluctance to grant the Tamils asylum in the UK stemmed from a fear that the Chagos Islands could be used as a back door for asylum seekers to arrive in the country, Mr Short explained.

Handing back the islands to Mauritius removed that possibility. Any new migrants arriving on the islands will be sent to St Helena in the south Atlantic, but the Tamils will not be part of that group.

An agreement has now been reached for some of the Tamils on Diego Garcia and Rwanda to be transferred to a UN emergency transit centre for asylum seekers in Romania for six months. During that time, the UK government may offer them the chance to go to other countries, while the remaining 28 unaccompanied men remain on Diego Garcia. Others have been offered an enhanced voluntary package to return to their countries of origin.

“This government inherited a deeply troubling situation which remained unresolved under the last administration for years after the migrants’ arrival on Diego Garcia, resulting in mounting legal challenges," a UK government spokeswoman said.

“The British Indian Ocean Territory has never been a suitable long-term location for migrants. Migrants’ welfare and safety have been our top priority and UK ministers have worked hard to find solutions and contingency plans which protect the integrity of British territorial borders and migrant welfare.”

Mr Short says that, in the face of the conditions and allegations of abuse, it is “incumbent on the UK government to take decisive action to ensure our clients are relocated immediately".

“Everybody thinks they need to come off the island and the UN agrees with that,” he said. “If the judge agrees with us that they're unlawfully detained on the island, the main thing is that it adds further weight to the argument they have to be removed even if it's the UN facility or it's some other solution that the government comes up with. It's just untenable for them to stay on the island.”

For Priya, moving on to Romania seems the most probable next step, although the prospect of living in another camp fills her with dread. All she wants is for “peaceful sleep and a safe place” to live.